


play the game again

by fenying



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Peek-a-Boo (Music Video), Alternate Universe - Small Town, Horror, Implied/Referenced Murder, M/M, Multi, Thriller, i believe it is mild but you may have your own opinion on that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:27:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23898982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fenying/pseuds/fenying
Summary: Jeno is Lee’s Pizzeria’s newest delivery boy. Jeno has made his first delivery to the house across the street. Jeno is going to mysteriously disappear in around two weeks.Fuck.or: Jaemin Na’s guide to getting someone else fired from the sketchy pizza joint they work at, for their own safety.
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin, Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin
Comments: 39
Kudos: 240
Collections: nono birthday bash





	play the game again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [misleko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misleko/gifts).



> hi xin (again) the main course is finally ready to be served! i really liked all of your prompts but this one just blew me away! i did get a little carried away oops (10k for a ficlet exchange...) but i had so much fun writing this, and i hope you enjoy reading it! 
> 
> big thanks to ying for beta-ing this for me so quickly! you're the best and i love you so much <3
> 
> happy late jeno day, happy early dream comeback, lesbians, jeno, hurrah!

Jaemin’s just starting on his calculus set when he hears the familiar sound of tires squealing on asphalt, a dying engine sputtering away.

He shoves his homework away, scrambling out of his chair and to the window. The clock reads a few minutes past midnight. Many people order pizza at this time—in the city, that is. But in a small town like this, Jaemin knows everyone on this street. And only one house on this street orders pizza at this time.

He’s seen this particular sedan too many times for comfort. The garish yellow is only slightly more palatable at night, _Lee’s Pizzeria_ emblazoned on the side in mismatched fonts. The car pulls up to the curb and parks under a streetlight. Smart, but it won’t save him.

The engine shuts off. Jaemin watches the driver climb out, pizza box in hand. If he listens carefully, he can hear the sound of whistling. Perhaps this delivery boy isn’t that smart, after all—he seems to be blissfully ignorant of the fate that awaits him.

From a drawer in his desk, Jaemin retrieves a small notepad and a pen. He resumes his position by the window, hands parting the curtains slightly, just as the delivery boy walks up to the front door of the house across the street. Jaemin checks the running log in his notes, skimming through pages covered in ballpoint pen markings—he’d nicknamed this one ‘Trevor’ on a whim. He’d first seen Trevor roughly two weeks ago, and Trevor already has two tally marks next to his name.

Jaemin opens the window a crack to try and hear what’s going on outside. It’s a bit of a wasted effort, considering that the blustering wind drowns out most of the sound and is just making his room cold, but if Jaemin strains his ears, he can catch snippets of conversation.

Trevor says something like, “here’s your pizza.” Generic delivery boy stuff. It’s not really Trevor he cares about. Jaemin listens harder, and the person who responds doesn’t sound the same as the one who’d answered the door last week—tone a little reedier, voice pitched a little higher. Both sounded distinctly feminine, though.

“Thanks,” says the girl, practically purring the word out. Jaemin squints—is she wearing a rainbow-colored dress? “Say, you must be tired running around delivering pizzas at this time. Why don’t you come in for a glass of water or something?”

_Say no_ , Jaemin wants to scream, trying his absolute hardest to transmit this telepathically to Trevor. _Say no!_ Unfortunately, Trevor doesn’t seem to get the message. “Sure,” he answers readily, already crossing the threshold of the house.

The door slams shut with a sense of finality. Jaemin waits at the window, nervously flipping through the pages of his notepad. He presses his ear to the open crack in the window, but suddenly it’s as if he’s stuck in a sound vacuum, all noise sucked out. It’s deathly quiet—even the wind has fallen silent.

Jaemin watches for another hour. Trevor doesn’t emerge. The car sits at the curb, abandoned.

After he finally decides to go to bed, homework forgotten, he’s woken up in the middle of the night by a shrill scream. It lasts for only a second, but in that time Jaemin bolts out of bed and runs to the window. He catches a glimpse of a shadowy figure next to the car still parked by the curb before his vision clouds over, lack of sleep starting to catch up to him. Jaemin rubs it out of his eyes and looks again.

There is nothing. The car is gone.

A few months back, Jaemin would’ve chalked it up to many things—poor vision, hallucinations, a bad dream. But by now, he knows better.

Jaemin takes the still-open notepad lying on his desk and adds another tally next to Trevor’s name. Then he crosses it out entirely.

A quick glance up the page tells Jaemin what he already knows—Trevor’s name follows a list of several others, all poorly nicknamed by Jaemin and all with three tallies next to their names. All struck through. Trevor wasn’t the first, and he probably won’t be the last, either.

Jaemin tucks the notepad back into the depths of the desk drawer and goes back to bed, trying to catch a few hours of fitful sleep before he has to wake up for class.

“Wow, you’re here a lot,” says the kid who steps up to the counter next, head craned to see the menu even though he always orders the same thing. He’s in Jeno’s Intro to Writing class. This is what Jeno hates about being a transfer student—not all of his credits transferred over, so now he’s stuck taking gen eds with upstart freshmen.

Jeno resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose, just because his hands are covered in pizza grease and he doesn’t want to ruin all the work he’d put into maintaining an actual skincare routine. “I work here, Jisung.”

“Yeah, but like, all the time?” There’s a line forming behind him. Jeno is the only cashier on duty. Jisung hems and haws, mulling over the options. “Don’t you have to study or something?”

_Thank you for reminding me that I’m broke,_ Jeno wants to say. Instead, he diplomatically says, “I do that when I’m not working.”

“Oh,” says Jisung, innocuously judgemental. He’s already lost interest in Jeno, still staring at the menu. Quiet grumbles float to the front, the customers behind him starting to complain about the wait.

“Do you know what you want yet?” asks Jeno. His temples are starting to pulse.

“Not yet.” Jisung is completely unapologetic. Jeno kind of wants to dropkick him. He always orders the same thing, even if it takes him forever to decide. “Hey, what do you recommend?”

“Anything is good,” Jeno answers blandly. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see someone at the back of the line heading out the doors.

“Okay.” Jisung falls silent for an excruciatingly long time. Jeno taps his foot, tempo increasing as time stretches on. After what feels like forever, Jisung speaks again. “Can I get the pepperoni pizza?”

_Fucking finally,_ says Jeno’s brain. His mouth translates that to customer speak, so he avoids getting fired for another day, but with how irritatedly he takes Jisung’s money and slams the register shut, even Jisung starts to look abashed. Jisung skitters off to the side to wait for his pizza. Jeno sucks in a deep breath through his nose. “Next in line, please.”

Jeno hates Lee’s Pizzeria, hates his school, hates this entire town. The only reason he’s here at all is because tuition and housing is cheaper here than at his old university—although not cheap enough apparently, if he still has to work a shitty, full-time job like this. By the time the clock runs down and it’s nearing the end of his shift, he’s contemplating dropping out of school to become a rancher. It’d be a simple life—the cows won’t judge him for not having a university degree.

“Hey, Jeno.”

Jeno startles out of his daydream, slipping and hitting the NO SALE button on the register. The cash drawer shoots open and slams right into his stomach. “Yeah, what’s up?” he wheezes.

Yuta, his manager, looks more disgruntled than usual—an impressive feat, considering his normal facial expressions range from slight demonic sadism to complete indifference to employee suffering. “Another delivery boy ran out on me, so I have an open shift tomorrow. You want it?”

Jeno weighs the options. On one hand, he has three tests on Friday that he still hasn’t studied for. He works for minimum wage at Lee’s Pizzeria, managed by a guy whose last name doesn’t sound anything remotely like Lee. Three delivery boys have mysteriously disappeared in the past two months he’s slaved away at this job. He goes home and takes three showers every day after work and he still can’t rub the smell of burnt plastic cheese off his skin.

On the other, he’s behind on rent and his bank slapped him with a massive overdraft fee after he’d spent money that he didn’t have on textbooks. And if he’s delivering, that means he doesn’t have to be stuck behind the counter taking orders from boys like Jisung Park.

Jeno shrugs. “Sure, I’ll take it.”

There’s something about this street that makes Jeno ease off the gas pedal as soon as he makes the turn. He slows the car down to a crawl, checking the numbers on the houses. The streetlights are spaced farther apart than what should probably be legal, but Jeno doesn’t make it a habit to keep himself updated on city regulations.

Of course, it’s the last house on the street that ends up being Jeno’s destination. He kills the engine and stuffs the keys in his pocket, cautiously getting out of the car as if his body knows to be wary of _something._ What exactly, Jeno doesn’t know. He steps on a leaf and startles himself with the sound, heartbeat spiking.

It’s normal to be nervous on his first shift on delivery. He’ll get used to it. Right.

This time, Jeno leaves the car unlocked—there’s nothing really important inside there, anyways. The house seems normal enough—a lush lawn, a cute chair and table set on the patio, tall trees that loom over Jeno and make him feel tiny—if Jeno discounts the fact that the entire property is dark. It’s as if there’s an invisible boundary surrounding it. One minute, he’s still under the safety of the streetlamps, and the next, all the light has been sucked out of the sky. He stands still for a minute just so his eyes can adjust.

Jeno walks up the front steps, peering at the windows. With the curtains drawn, he can’t see much, but his eye catches on something—a faint light in the distance, flickering. Like a single, solitary candle in the midst of the pitch blackness that swathes the rest of the house.

When he tries to knock on the door, it swings open before his fist can even come into contact with the old, polished wood. “Oh, you’re fast,” says the girl who answers. “Much better than the last boy.”

And Jeno would laugh modestly at that, if he _could._ But he opens his mouth and the words shrivel up and die in his throat, lodging themselves in his windpipe. The girl just raises an eyebrow at his sudden inability to talk, amused. Jeno doesn’t resist when she easily takes the box out of his hand.

She’s magnetic—Jeno finds himself inexplicably drawn to her, unable to tear his eyes away even from the simple action of her taking out a wallet to pay him. Jeno doesn’t even like girls that often, but this one is—for lack of a better word—alluring. The girl tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and Jeno follows the motion with his eyes, trailing down her arm and the curve of her waist. The glitzy rainbow dress she’s wearing complements her figure perfectly, sequins twinkling in the low light.

He doesn’t even notice she’s trying to pay him until the bills are waved in front of his face, breaking him out of his daze. Instantly he’s flooded with shame. She must think he’s being such a creep, he swears he’s not like this normally, _oh my God_ —

“Ah– thanks,” is all he manages to claw out of the barren desert his throat has become. “Let me get your change.”

“No need,” says the girl. Once Jeno takes the money out of her hand, she lets it drop and brush his arm. He can’t tell if it’s an accident or not. “Consider it a tip for… good service.”

Her smile sends a shiver down his spine. “Enjoy your pizza.”

“What’s your name, dear?” she asks before he can leave, leaning casually against the doorframe as if she’s planning to stay there all night.

_Dear_ makes something flutter in Jeno’s chest, and he doesn’t even hesitate before giving his name to her. She repeats it back to him, rolling it around in her mouth like it’s something special. “Je– no. I hope to see you around.”

“You too,” he says, hesitant to leave. But the girl shoos him off with a wave of her hand and a smile, not unkindly—it’s something akin to his old first grade teacher telling him to go outside and play with the other kids. It should feel condescending, but it makes Jeno’s cheeks heat up. He turns around and takes a few steps to leave, almost tripping down the stairs. When the door clicks shut, Jeno looks over his shoulder to see the door closed and the girl gone. There’s a tangible disappointment sitting at the bottom of his stomach. He’s not really sure why.

This is his last delivery for the night; he’s finally free to go home and sleep off his exhaustion. He isn’t thinking about that, though. He stumbles back to the car in a daze, runs three red lights on the drive back home, and tosses and turns in bed, mind consumed solely by two things: the girl, and when he can see her again.

Queasy foreboding hits Jaemin’s stomach the same way every time he hears the sound of a car rolling up after midnight. He should be used to it by now, but some things are just difficult to adjust to.

It’s hard to see what the new guy looks like. The bulbs of the only nearby streetlamp are starting to die, and Jaemin knows it’ll be a while before the city finally sends someone out to replace it. He balances his notepad on his knee and pulls the window curtains open, catching glimpses of a broad figure. Some sort of frat guy, maybe—not quite a Chad, though. Jaemin thinks for a bit before writing down _Dylan_ on the next blank line.

Dylan looks rightfully suspicious walking up to the house. Five minutes later, Dylan looks like an absolute klutz walking back to his car, expression glazed over in a dumbstruck haze. That’s not what Jaemin’s looking at, though.

His eyes sweep over jawline, cheekbone—even from far away, Jaemin can recognize the profile of the boy he’s been staring at during his organic chemistry lecture every Monday and Wednesday for the past six weeks. Jeno Lee?

A second later, it hits him. Jeno Lee—Jeno is Lee’s Pizzeria’s newest delivery boy. Jeno has made his first delivery to the house across the street. Jeno is going to mysteriously disappear in around two weeks. _Fuck._

Jaemin scrambles up from his seat to press his face to the glass, notepad kicked somewhere under his desk. _Fuck!_ His mind races with solutions, all falling apart the moment he thinks of them. He’s already tried filing multiple police reports, and warning the delivery boys away has done nothing. There’s only one solution left.

Jaemin purses his lips. He’s going to get Jeno Lee fired.

Jeno floats through his classes the next day, mind stuffed with cotton balls. When his professor passes back midterms, he barely pays the angry red 47 on his paper any mind. He puts on his uniform for work and doesn’t even mind that it still smells like stale pepperoni. A customer curses at him after Jisung holds the line up and he smiles and tells her to have a good day.

He can’t get the girl out of his mind. The picture of her leaning against the doorframe in her rainbow dress is engraved onto the insides of his eyelids, haunting him every time he starts to daydream. But then it flickers—Jeno squints to try and focus it, but suddenly there’s a hand being waved in his face, and the picture sputters out. “Hello? Anyone home?”

Jeno blinks. When the world fades back in, there’s a boy standing across the counter from him.

He knows this boy—Jaemin Na, from orgo. He’s never seen Jaemin here before. Jaemin is the kind of boy you find yourself staring at for a little too long sometimes, momentarily obsessed with his casual poise and dazzling smile. In Jeno’s mind, he belongs exclusively in abstractly beautiful places—lounging on the lush lawn of a rich kids’ school, dancing under the chandelier lights of a ballroom, walking along a clean beach at sunset. Jeno didn’t think he was the kind of person to frequent dingy pizza places with less-than-satisfactory health inspection scores.

Jaemin fidgets with his hands, and Jeno absently notes that nervousness doesn’t sit right on a face as pretty as his. “Sorry, what can I get you?”

Jaemin had a plan. Not a very detailed or well thought out one, but a plan nonetheless. He was going to march into Lee’s Pizzeria, pull something—he hadn’t figured out what exactly, but _something_ —and get Jeno fired. It was foolproof. In theory.

In reality, Jaemin is quickly learning that his plan was not, in fact, foolproof. For one—he wasn’t expecting his brain to fucking _short circuit_ as soon as he had Jeno’s full attention on him.

There’s a difference between trying to hide your constant staring at the guy across the lecture hall from you and, like, actually being face to face with him. Jeno tilts his head curiously and says something that Jaemin’s brain cannot process right now. He’s panicking, and the fact that he’s panicking just makes him panic more because he shouldn’t be panicking because he’s used to being the suave and confident one but there’s just something about Jeno that makes him panic and oh God how is he supposed to get him fired and save his life now. _Think, Jaemin, think!_

“Hey. Hey, dude—” oh my God he’s talking to him— “Dude. Jaemin—” he said his _name,_ he knows Jaemin’s name— “Hey. Are you gonna order something.”

Jaemin feels like he’s been wrung out to dry, like he’d received a party invitation but forgot to _répondez s'il vous plaît_ in time and now the host isn’t sure if there’s any more room for him. “Uh,” he says, and blanks.

Jeno raises an eyebrow. Jaemin tries to look at anywhere _but_ him, and his eyes latch onto a cup of plastic straws sitting by the register. Perfect.

He picks up the cup and dumps the straws onto himself, letting them fall out and scatter across the floor. Then he drops the cup. The hard plastic echoes against the tiles. “Oh my God,” he says, extremely stilted. There’s a reason why he failed drama in high school. “What did you throw all those straws at me for?”

Jeno’s jaw drops. “Dude, what the fuck?”

“You totally just threw all those straws at me for no reason,” says Jaemin, “and now you’re cursing at me.”

Jeno looks like he’s about to cry. Jaemin feels bad for a moment, but then he remembers that he’s saving Jeno’s life, so it’ll all work out in the end. Jeno will thank him later, even if right now he’s gritting his teeth and sounding like he’s trying really hard not to yell when he says, “Please just order something so I can ring you up and then clean up the straws you just dumped on the floor.”

“And now you’re lying,” scoffs Jaemin, falling back into his natural rhythm. He knows how to be obstinate. “Because I totally did not drop those straws on the floor. You threw them at me. I’m not ordering anything, I wanna speak to your manager.”

Jeno pinches the bridge of his nose, taking a deep breath. Oh, Jaemin feels really bad—he’s scared Jeno might actually cry. “He’s not here right now.”

Jaemin blanks. Fuck—he didn’t account for this. How was he supposed to know Jeno’s manager wouldn’t be there? Now he’s just gone and caused Jeno emotional distress without actually getting him fired, and he’s going to have to come back and cause him more distress and it might not even save him in the end, Jeno might die with his last impression of Jaemin being that really annoying guy who threw straws all over himself and Jaemin’s had bad experiences with some of his crushes but he’s never had one _die_ before. “What do you mean he’s not here?”

“I mean, he’s not here. He’s out.”

“When is he getting back?”

“I don’t know,” huffs Jeno, and Jaemin feels bad, he really does, but he’s also trying really hard to maintain the angry facade and hide the new wave of panic that floods him.

“Then I’ll,” Jaemin flounders for a solution, “wait until he gets back.”

“You’re going to _wait_?” asks Jeno, voice pitching suddenly in hysteria. “It’s literally past midnight!”

“Is there… something wrong here?”

Both Jeno and Jaemin turn to look at the newcomer. He looks to be around their age, wearing a white button-up and skinny jeans that complement his slim frame and look way too nice for a pizza joint like this. Jaemin would bet anything he’s a rich international student. He must be another customer who happened to overhear their conversation, but why he’d decided to interrupt them is a mystery. “Nothing’s wrong,” he says sharply, a little too defensive.

“Are you sure?” asks the boy, stripping Jaemin down with his gaze like he’s accusing him of something. Jaemin doesn’t like it. “Sounded like things were getting heated.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Jaemin repeats, taking a step forward and trying to intimidate him with the few inches of height he has on him. “Stay out of it.”

The boy doesn’t back down at all, sizing Jaemin up like he’s a wild animal. Alarms are going off in Jaemin’s head; exactly nothing is going as it should be. “No, I don’t think I will—”

“I’m going,” Jeno announces abruptly. Jaemin almost trips over himself as he and the boy spring apart, Jeno rushing between them to leave. “I need to go.”

“Where are you going?” asks Jaemin, restraining himself from tackling Jeno to the ground and making sure he can’t leave. _No, no, no, he can’t leave, no—_

“I have a delivery to make,” says Jeno, and Jaemin finally notices the pizza box he’s holding in his hands. When did that happen? “I’m going. Bye.”

Jeno leaves before Jaemin can even say anything. Jaemin curses under his breath, mind consumed with the single thought of _he needs to go after him right now_ , but he’s stopped by a hand grabbing his wrist right before he can push his way out of the front doors. “What do you want?” he snaps.

Jaemin’s sure he looks half-deranged at this point, but this boy apparently isn’t scared of anything. “You’re not going after him, are you?” he asks, stern. “Stop bothering him.”

“It’s none of your business,” Jaemin snarls, trying and failing to tug his arm free. The boy’s grip is iron around Jaemin’s wrist, though, slim fingers locking together in an almost unbreakable bind. Jaemin doesn’t have time to be baffled at how absurdly strong this skinny guy is, goddamnit. “Let me go!”

When he finally wrenches his wrist out of the boy’s grasp, he’s sure it’s not by his own strength. The boy let him go on purpose. Jaemin doesn’t stop to wonder why, though; he sprints out into the parking lot just to see the _Lee’s Pizzeria_ car turning onto a backroad. There’s only one house in that direction that would be ordering pizza at this time.

His hands are shaking so much it takes him three tries to unlock his own car. He speeds out of the parking lot, hot on Jeno’s trail, and doesn’t notice the police motorcycle that leaves almost right after him and tails him from a distance.

Moving to this backwards dump of a town was not the gift that his old precinct’s captain made it out to be, when the order for his transfer was first put in a couple months ago. But Renjun already knew that.

Being moved to a small, slow-paced town might be a nice, relaxing stint for someone who’s about to retire, but for a rookie detective like Renjun, this is the kind of punishment that breaks careers. He expected to be frustrated. He expected to be bored.

He didn’t expect to be breaking up petty squabbles between college students. He also didn’t expect to be chasing after one who was chasing the other, but, well.

At least it’s more interesting than sitting at his desk doing paperwork all day. God knows the rest of his new colleagues can handle it, seeing how much they prefer it to actually solving crimes.

Renjun tails the one who’d dumped straws all over himself—Straw Boy, he nicknames him—all the way to a quiet residential street. At this time of night, it’s hard to see anything. Renjun parks his bike in between two cars on the curb and takes off his helmet. Pizzeria Boy’s car is already parked on one side of the road, its driver nowhere to be seen. Renjun watches Straw Boy pull into a driveway on the other side of the road, failing to contain his surprise when the garage door opens and Straw Boy parks his car inside. Clearly he’s missing something here, because he doesn’t know why Straw Boy would be in such a rush just to drive back to his own home.

Renjun kicks the kickstand of his bike down, grateful he’s not in uniform. It makes following hunches like this much easier—uniformed officers are eye-catching, but Renjun can do what he wants. It’s not like anyone back at the station gives a shit, anyways.

Casually, he tries to walk past Straw Boy’s house, but he stops when he hears a door slam on the other side of the road. There’s a flash of movement in the corner of his eye—Renjun turns to look at the house directly opposite Straw Boy’s. Pizzeria Boy’s car is parked right outside, but the front porch is empty. Renjun didn’t know pizza delivery boys made a habit out of actually going inside customers’ houses these days.

Renjun keeps walking, eyes flicking between Straw Boy’s house and the house Pizzeria Boy had just gone into. Nothing seems out of place—until Renjun sees Straw Boy peeking out of one of the upstairs windows. Renjun can’t see his face too clearly, but he’d bet anything Straw Boy’s staring at the house across the street. _Ah._

Renjun’s not the kind of person to jump to conclusions, but now he’s pretty sure he knows what’s going on. Straw Boy must be Pizzeria Boy’s jealous ex-boyfriend—wanted to get him fired, followed him to his new lover’s house. Renjun’s seen it before, although he didn’t really expect someone as pretty as Straw Boy to resort to such stalkerish tendencies. Back in the city, boys like that just jumped into new relationships as a form of revenge. People are just of a different breed in this town, he supposes.

He writes it off as the strange behavior of strange residents in a strange little town. All his cases are closed, so he has some free time in the next few days—maybe he’ll keep an eye on Straw Boy and make sure the situation doesn’t escalate into violence. Who knows? Maybe he’ll finally have something of note to report, and get Pizzeria Boy’s number while he’s at it. He was cute, too.

Satisfied, Renjun walks back to his motorcycle, driving off just a little too early to see Pizzeria Boy stumble out of the house, _Lee’s Pizzeria_ cap missing and face wiped even blanker than the first time.

Jaemin walks into the library, around a bookshelf, down an aisle, and in and out of the lounge space. He weaves between clusters of students and doubles back to the entrance, taking a sharp right to head to the bathroom just before he can exit. From there he loops around to go upstairs, zigzagging through the rows of computer desks and crossing through empty meeting rooms.

Whoever’s following him is doing an excellent job of staying on his tail, and a horrible job at being inconspicuous. Jaemin hasn’t been able to catch Jeno at all since the straw disaster, but he’s seen flashes of the same red knit jumper more than twenty times today. It’s way too hot for that kind of clothing—no one on campus has that kind of dedication to style.

Just as Jaemin thinks he’s finally lost them, he peeks over the edge of the railing to see a boy in a bright red jumper sitting at one of the tables near the entrance. The boy flips idly through a book, but his eyes flit upward to meet Jaemin’s. _Damn._

Jaemin heads downstairs and throws his backpack on the table, pulling out one of the seats and staring the boy dead in the eye as the chair legs screech against the floor. It’s the boy from the pizza place—he returns Jaemin’s look coolly, expression neutral. There’s something like amusement sparkling in his eyes when Jaemin unzips his backpack without breaking eye contact.

Jaemin’s never seen a rich international student here—they flock to the private schools a few hours away in bigger cities—which is why he wonders if his original estimations were off. “Are you even allowed to be in here?” he asks, pulling out his laptop.

“The library is for students’ use, isn’t it?” the boy counters.

Jaemin hazards a guess. “But you’re not a student.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Prove it, then,” says Jaemin. “Show me your ID.”

The boy’s lips quirk up. “Are you sure this isn’t just a ploy to get my name?”

_Wait a second_ — “No!” says Jaemin, a little too loudly. He ignores the dirty looks from the next table. “ _You’re_ the one who’s been following me.”

“You don’t have to be shy, I’ll give it to you for free,” the boy says casually, attention returning to his book. Jaemin would bet good money he isn’t processing a single word on that page. “In exchange.”

“For what?”

“For yours,” says the boy. Jaemin pauses for a split second to think before tossing his ID over to him. The boy snatches it neatly out of the air, eyes scanning over the text on the card. “Jaemin Na,” he reads out loud. He looks back and forth between Jaemin and the ID, forcing him to endure his silent appraisal, before sliding the card back over. “Cute.”

Jaemin wills down a blush, raising an eyebrow instead. He puts the ID away, turning his attention back to his laptop and trying to ignore the force of the boy’s gaze.

“What are you doing?” asks the boy.

Homework is the actual answer, but Jaemin says, “Filing a complaint,” just to test the boy’s reaction.

The boy snorts. “With Lee’s Pizzeria?”

“What do you think?” snarks Jaemin, and he’s rewarded with a soft laugh. The boy’s practically drowning in his own jumper—he looks way too innocent to be playing mind games with people. If he hadn’t been stalking him earlier, Jaemin might have even tried to flirt with him.

“What is it with you and that guy from Lee’s?” asks the boy.

“I need Jeno to be fired for his own good,” Jaemin answers honestly. The boy laughs at that, too.

“See, you’re so obsessed with him you even know his name.”

“It’s not like that,” Jaemin argues, his fragile control over the situation slipping even further away. He doesn’t know what it is about this boy that makes him feel out of his depth. “We’re classmates.”

“Odd fixation.”

“I’m trying to save his life!”

“You have fun with that,” says the boy, snapping his book shut and making to get up. The wave of relief that hits Jaemin is tinged with a sudden panicked urge to make him stay. He doesn’t know why he feels like he needs to explain everything to this boy until he _understands._

In the end, he merely says, “You haven’t shown me your ID yet.”

“Oh, right.” The boy leans closer to Jaemin, so close Jaemin can see he’s not even breaking a sweat in that jumper. He holds out a card—Jaemin’s eyes skim over _Renjun Huang_ and _Police Department_ —before pulling it away and tucking it back into his wallet. “I’ll see you around, Jaemin.”

Jaemin watches him go, wondering what the hell just happened.

Jeno hasn’t been avoiding Jaemin.

Okay, yes he has. Most of it is because he’d like to keep this job and he doesn’t want to be harassed at work again, but a small part of it is because he’d been nursing a teeny tiny crush on Jaemin and is a little devastated that he turned out to be an asshole.

Instead he spends his time at work fighting off angry customers, dealing with Jisung Park, and staring at the cute boy who’d tried to defend him from Jaemin last time. Cute Boy stares back.

Cute Boy always wears clothes that are way too nice for a dumpy place like this—Jeno wants to warn him that if he spends long enough here his clothes won’t stop smelling like grease, but he also likes when Cute Boy spends a lot of time keeping him company while wearing nice clothes that make him look like a model. Today, Cute Boy orders the #1 combo. Jeno upgrades his soda size for free with a wink.

“Is that how you flirt with people? Giving them soda upgrades?” and oh no, he was too enamoured with Cute Boy to notice _Jaemin._

“I think he’s better at flirting than you are,” says Cute Boy.

Jaemin’s smirk morphs into a scowl. “I wasn’t flirting with you,” he says, “and anyways, you say you’re not following me?”

“Maybe I just really like pizza.”

“From this place?” Jaemin throws an arm out to gesture, and Jeno feels like he should be offended but honestly, he’s got a point. They do well with take-out and delivery, but the general greasiness of the place often discourages customers from dining in.

But still. “What do you want,” he directs at Jaemin.

“Jeno.” And suddenly Jaemin is _way_ closer than he was two seconds ago, all up in Jeno’s face with an apologetic expression. “Look. I’m really sorry about the straw incident,” he says, and he does look pretty genuine. “I… wasn’t thinking.”

“Well, that’s for sure,” says Jeno, pleased when Cute Boy laughs.

It doesn’t seem to slow Jaemin’s stride, though. “I promise it was one hundred percent in good faith, though,” he says, oddly serious. “Jeno, you need to stop making deliveries. Even better, quit this job and run far, far away.”

_What?_ “I can’t do that, I need this job,” Jeno argues. “I have student loans to pay off. I need the money.”

“Is the money worth your life?”

Jeno pauses. How much of his life has he spent slaving away at this place, all for an education that might not save him? “Capitalism owns us all, anyways.”

“No, you don’t _understand–_ ” Jaemin rakes a hand through his hair in frustration. “That house isn’t safe. Don’t you wonder why everyone before you disappeared?”

Jeno’s ready for this conversation to end. “What house?”

“The–”

“Order up!” someone calls from the back, and Jeno’s register pings with the printout of an order. His heart soars when he reads the address—it’s the house with the pretty girls. They even requested him specifically, a heart emoji tacked onto his name.

“Sorry, gotta go,” says Jeno.

“Wait, what– where are you going?”

Jeno blissfully ignores the panic in Jaemin’s voice. “Off to make a delivery.”

_fuckfuckfuCKFUCK—_ “Fuck,” swears Jaemin, entire body jittering with adrenaline as Jeno practically runs out. He can’t let Jeno die.

“This is some serious deja vu,” says Renjun, and suddenly Jaemin remembers he’s there.

“Renjun!” Jaemin snatches Renjun’s phone right out of his hand, texting his own number with it. His own phone pings in his pocket. “You’re a cop, right?”

“Uh, yes?”

Jaemin grips Renjun by the shoulders, staring him dead in the eye. “Look, you didn’t believe me when I said I needed to save Jeno’s life, but I need you to trust me. I need you to do exactly what I say, as fast as you can.”

He half-expects Renjun to argue or question him, heaving an internal sigh of relief when Renjun just nods, chin set. “What do you need me to do?”

“Go back to the station and look for all the reports filed by Jaemin Na,” Jaemin instructs him carefully. “Then you’ll understand. Then I need you to come after us.”

“Us?” asks Renjun. “Where are you going?”

Jaemin’s already striding out the doors—today was a good day to bring his motorcycle. “After Jeno.”

The girl who opens the door this time is different from the last one, who was different from the one before that. How many girls live in this house? Jeno always wants to ask their names, but he forgets in the moment, overwhelmed by their… it’s more than their beauty. Each girl has such a magnetizing aura that he forgets who he is sometimes.

“Thanks,” says the girl with a wink, taking the pizza box out of his limp hand. She’s just as pretty as the others, and her dress is equally as dazzling. “Say, do you want to come in for a glass of water? You look like you could use it.”

And really, there’s nothing else Jeno can say but, “I’d love to.”

It’s like passing through a veil when he steps over the threshold, a shift in the air from outside to inside. Somehow Jeno feels less in control of his body—someone else is at the reins, controlling his limbs and making his feet move to follow the girl. She brings him to the living room, setting the pizza on a coffee table in front of two other girls. Jeno’s never seen them before. Really, how many girls live in this house?

One girl sits in an armchair, playing chess by herself. Her fingers ghost lazily over the pieces. She picks up a pawn and twirls it once, twice, before setting it down a square off where it was before.

The other girl has her bare legs kicked up on the sofa. She fiddles with a gadget in her hands, but the house is dimly lit and Jeno has to squint to make out what it is. He blinks when he realizes it’s a crossbow, arrow notched and ready to fire. Isn’t that dangerous?

The girl catches him staring, raising an eyebrow in challenge. Jeno looks away.

“Pizza’s here,” says the girl who brought him in, setting the box down on the table. Neither of the other girls spare it more than a glance, each absorbed in her own activity. “Come on, Jeno.”

Jeno startles. He didn’t know she knew his name.

She looks back over her shoulder at him and shoots him a dazzling smile. It’s like a tranquilizer dart—inexplicably, his nerves are instantly soothed. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

He follows her down a dark hallway, straining his neck as he looks around. There’s no end in sight, the distance before them swallowed up in a gaping maw of darkness. At the sound of an extra set of footsteps, he jerks to a stop, but when he looks behind him there’s no one there.

“Problem?” Jeno whips his head back around. The girl’s still smiling, but her eyes glitter with something like annoyance in the dark.

Jeno clears his throat. “No, sorry. Just thought I heard something.”

“There’s nothing to hear,” the girl says simply, before continuing down the hallway. Jeno doesn’t dare stop again, but he strains his ears listening for anything out of the ordinary. He swears there are more footsteps—swears they’re multiplying, _thump-thump_ turning into a faster _thump-thump-thump-thump_ —but when he tries to look over his shoulder again he almost trips over a knot in the carpet. There’s still nothing behind him—that he can see, anyways.

Without warning, the girl makes a sharp turn left, leading him down another corridor. This one is slightly better-lit, candles set in holders on the floor. Their flames cast odd shadows along the walls, shifting shapes that ebb and grow erratically. Glass cases line one side of the hallway, lit up from the inside. The girl slows to a stop in front of the first one. “Just thought I’d show you the collection first.”

The torso of a mannequin sits inside. Its face looks oddly realistic for what’s presumably just plastic. Jeno would step closer, maybe even press his face to the glass for a better look, if he thought he could. Instead, he stands a few meters back, courteous viewing distance at any museum. It takes him longer than it should for him to realize why the shirt the mannequin’s wearing looks so familiar. It’s a _Lee’s Pizzeria_ uniform—an older one, albeit, in a different color from the one Jeno wears right now—but a matching polo shirt nonetheless. A cap sits on the mannequin’s head, and Jeno reaches up instinctively to touch his uncovered head, feeling oddly bared. He still doesn’t know what happened to his hat—he must’ve misplaced it—and he hasn’t been able to replace it yet.

The girl’s strolling leisurely now, Jeno doing his best to match her pace. They pass by different iterations of the first statue, each successive glass case holding its own stone-solid mannequin with a uniform shirt and cap set. Sometimes the colors vary, and the mannequins look like slightly different sizes. They reach the last glass case before the end of the hallway—this one without a mannequin inside. Jeno stands on his tiptoes to see if there’s anything else.

On the floor of the case sits a red cap. Jeno’s eyes are sharper than usual—his eyes snag on a rip in the side that reminds him of his own cap, slightly marred from an incident with a pizza cutter.

“Almost there,” says the girl, leading him out of the hallway and into a large dining room.

The table is already set. An old, fraying tablecloth covers the wood underneath, and there are six places set out. On each plate sits a swaying mass of gelatin. Most are green. Two are jet black, like they’d been injected with inky food coloring. Four out of six chairs are filled—Jeno sees the two girls from earlier in the living room, as well as the two he’d met when delivering pizza before. The girl who’d been leading him down the hallway goes to sit on the far side, leaving Jeno with the empty seat in front of the last black gelatin dish.

The girls turn their heads slowly to watch him walk into the room, piercing him with their stares. There’s something unsettling about their smiles—a layer of softness hiding something less sweet underneath. “Won’t you come to dinner, Jeno?” one asks.

Jeno hesitates. He wasn’t aware he was invited for dinner. Actually, he can’t really remember what he came in for in the first place. It’s as if he’s watching his body from the outside—maybe if he opens his eyes, he’ll wake up and discover this was all a dream.

In a sudden moment of clarity, Jeno stops himself from going to sit down immediately—instead he takes an extra second to look around. A grandfather clock ticks lowly from the far end of the room. Candles line the edges of this room, too, and sit in the center of the table. One of the girls picks up her glass to take a sip out of the fluorescent liquid, sucking noisily at the straw.

Each girl has her own drink with her own straw. Jeno sees the straws and suddenly he’s fighting to keep a laugh in his chest. The straws remind him of Jaemin. What had he said?

_That house isn’t safe. Don’t you wonder why everyone before you disappeared?_

Jeno freezes. He looks up to see the girl who’d brought him here already looking back at him.

He runs.

His heart pounds in his ears as he turns on his heels and sprints as fast as he can down the hallway he came from. Everything is dark—he’s trying to retrace his steps but he can’t remember how he got here. The sound of his feet slamming against the floor isn’t enough to drown out the screeching that seems to ooze out of the walls, filling his ears and bouncing around in his head. His legs shake as he runs—one stumble, and he’s done for.

This house is impossible to navigate, each turn he takes leading him down a new corridor that never seems to end. He passes by more and more mannequins, sick of seeing their faces until he realizes why they look so realistic—they’re not plastic. A chill shoots down his spine when the thought of what—or who—that last empty glass case is for strikes him.

Jeno Lee, immortalized in plaster.

He keeps running, calves burning and breath coming out in short gasps. More mannequins, more glass cases, more grotesque decorations covering the peeling wallpaper and candles dotting the floor. One thought loops in his head as the cackles in pursuit of him grow louder and his legs start to slow— _Jaemin was right._

He has to tell Jaemin he was right. He has to make sure this never happens to anyone else. He has to get out.

He has to survive.

_Survive, survive, survive_ —the thought propels him down the labyrinthine mess of hallways and miraculously, back to the entrance. One more short stretch to cover, and he’s home free.

A force slams into him from the back, and he falls to the floor. Frantically, he rolls on his back to see the first girl he ever met from this house staring down at him with her teeth bared, no longer friendly. She pulls her fist back, and Jeno kicks her in the stomach.

The impact is enough to knock her off him. Jeno jumps up to see the girl with the crossbow aiming straight at his face, and for the first time tonight he genuinely believes he’s about to die. He came all this way, spent all this effort, and in the end he’ll have given his life up for a capitalistic scheme that was supposed to help him fund the other capitalistic scheme that was supposed to save him.

Jeno braces himself.

A honk blares from outside, and it’s just enough to startle the girl into accidentally shifting her aim off as she fires. It’s sheer adrenaline that saves Jeno from letting the bolt clip him in the side and gives him that last boost to push past her and out the door, into fresh air.

As soon as he steps outside, it’s like he can finally breathe again. His head clears. He keeps running—he doesn’t know when he can stop.

“Jeno,” comes a shrill scream, “hurry the fuck up!”

Sitting on the street just outside the house, engine already running, is a motorcycle, and Jeno thinks he’s never been so glad in his entire life to see the person on the bike. As soon as he’s close enough, Jaemin tosses him a helmet, cursing under his breath as Jeno buckles it on and slides on the bike behind him. “Hold on tight,” he says.

Jeno barely has enough time to wrap his arms around Jaemin’s stomach before Jaemin guns the engine, accelerating so fast Jeno can smell rubber burning. He thinks he yells something, but whatever it is gets lost in the wind.

“Where are we going?” he finally manages, squeezing Jaemin’s waist for dear life.

“Anywhere,” Jaemin yells back. “We just need to buy enough time until Renjun can catch up to us— _fuck!”_

A bolt whizzes past Jaemin’s head, just shy of nicking the curve of his ear, and the bike swerves so wildly they almost fall off until Jaemin manages to get it back under control. Jeno chances a look behind him—it’s the _Lee’s Pizzeria_ car, headlights turned off. The girl with the crossbow leans out the window on the passenger side, already loading another bolt into the mechanism.

It’s gaining on them. “Zig-zag!” Jeno screams, as another arrow barely misses taking off their heads. “Can you shake them off?”

Even in a high-speed chase, Jaemin can still find the energy to scoff. “Get ready to find out why I’m the best damn driver in this whole city, Jeno Lee,” he says, before switching gears so quickly the metal whines in protest and sending them barreling down a side alley.

Jeno thinks the alley is too narrow for the car to follow them. Jeno thinks wrong. It barrels down toward them, scraping against the side of the walls and knocking over trash cans set outside. Jaemin loops around before shooting down another street, making turns so quickly Jeno almost falls off the bike. He squeezes Jaemin so hard he thinks the poor boy might have a bruised rib or two after this—that is, if they make it out alive.

Jaemin wasn’t lying—he’s an incredible driver—but the girls continue to gain on them, tailing them all the way to a cliff on the edge of town. “Shit,” curses Jaemin, curving the bike around to a halt right before they can fly off the edge. The car follows behind, rumbling to a stop, and Jeno feels—he feels bad. He feels bad that Jaemin tried so hard to save his sorry ass, and in the end, both of them will die. He opens his mouth to thank him, to apologize, and—

Sirens screech into the dead of night. Police cars suddenly appear out of nowhere, surrounding them on all sides. “Thank fuck,” Jaemin breathes. Jeno can feel him exhale, back pressed to his front, and the sensation makes him jolt. He lets go quickly, as if burned.

The boy from before, the one with the nice clothes at the pizzeria—he steps out of one of the cars with a windbreaker over his outfit, gun cocked. “Get out of the car with your hands up,” a uniformed officer says into a megaphone, the sound reverberating in Jeno’s chest.

The car engine shuts off, and Jeno thinks this might really be it, they’re _saved_ —before the headlights flash and the engine revs up again. There’s just enough light for Jeno to see the steely glare in the eyes of the driver, and fear spikes in his chest. She’s going to run them over—send them all flying over the edge of the cliff.

It all happens so fast, he doesn’t even have a second to breathe. The car barrels toward them at full speed. Jeno closes his eyes. There’s a gunshot—the car veers right before it can hit them, tumbling off the cliff into the ravine below.

Smoke wafts off the boy’s gun as he brings it back down to his side.

Jeno swings his leg over and off the bike, about to walk back to safety—and then all the adrenaline that’d been keeping him going drains away, and suddenly he has nothing left to hold him upright. His legs collapse, sending him sprawling onto the ground. A burst of movement—two seconds later, there are arms hoisting him up. “Are you alright?” asks the boy, eyes shining with concern.

“Yeah,” gasps Jeno, struggling to breathe. His throat feels like it’s closing in on itself. “Yeah,” he wheezes, “yeah, I’m alright.”

The boy lets him sling one arm over his narrow shoulders. Jeno takes a few steps before another person ducks under his arm and holds him up from the other side. “Jaemin,” Jeno breathes in wonderment. “How are you not half-dead from… From all that?”

Jaemin laughs, a choked sound. “You don’t look so hot yourself, casanova. That was a hell of a ride.”

And maybe it’s the sheer relief of being alive, maybe it’s the weary fondness in Jaemin’s eyes, maybe he’s just so, _so_ tired—but a sudden swell of emotion bursts in Jeno’s chest, and he makes them all stop walking so he can turn to face Jaemin, cupping his cheeks in his hands. Even now, Jaemin can still find the strength for a cheeky smile. The sight of it makes Jeno so warm.

Jaemin’s hands reach up to rest on his shoulders. Jeno leans in, and so does Jaemin, and they’re kissing, matching impulses entwined in a single moment. Jeno puts all the words he wants to say into the press of his lips against Jaemin’s—he thinks he understands.

It’s fast and messy, more out of lingering adrenaline than anything else. When they pull apart, Jeno rests his head on Jaemin’s shoulder, breathing ragged. Jaemin laughs, and Jeno can feel the vibration passing through his body. “Not my ideal first date,” he says. Jeno has to laugh too.

“I’m amazed you can still make jokes at this time,” says the boy from the pizzeria. Jeno had forgotten he was there in the rush.

“It’s how I deal with traumatic experiences,” says Jaemin.

The boy clicks his tongue, but it’s fond. “Let’s get you two somewhere you can rest,” he says, helping Jaemin support Jeno all the way into one of the police cars. Jeno collapses on the seat, and Jaemin quickly follows, head slumping onto Jeno’s shoulder. “You’ve had a long day.”

Jeno snorts. “That’s one way to put it.”

Renjun brings them back to the station, barely managing to keep them awake long enough to get their reports before both of them are out like a light, slumped over each other in the backseat of his personal car. Neither of them are in any state to go anywhere by themselves, so Renjun’s bringing them home. He turns the radio off—except for the low humming of the engine and the sound of someone snoring in the back, it’s utterly quiet.

He brings Jaemin home first, then sits in the car outside Jeno’s apartment building repeatedly dialing Jeno’s roommate until he finally picks up. Once he’s sure Jeno’s safely inside, only then does he finally set off for home.

His body aches for sleep, but his mind is still buzzing. Something doesn’t sit right with him—he’d only seen two girls in the car, but Jeno had mentioned at least five girls in the house. None of Jaemin’s reports had gone through, all stashed away in some cache that had taken Renjun forever to dig out. When he’d tried to send a team out to go back to the house after bringing Jeno and Jaemin to the station, his captain had blocked him, saying they didn’t have a legal warrant to do that. Renjun had opened his mouth to argue, _yes we do, did you see what the fuck just happened_ —and the captain had stared him down, something menacing behind the eyes. Renjun had bit his lip so hard he’d drawn blood.

He’d been forced to drop it. But he still can’t make sense of it, and it nags at him up until he's tossing and turning in bed, trying to fall asleep. In the back of his mind, there’s a niggling thought that this is bigger than them—bigger than just this town.

Something’s not right.

When Renjun wakes up from his restless sleep the next day, he can’t remember what exactly he was so worried about last night—there’s just an ugly sense of foreboding sitting in his stomach.

The next day, Renjun finally gets the warrant to search the house and arrest anyone he finds inside. He pulls up with a team of uniformed officers, dressed to the nines in bulletproof vests. When he knocks on the door and yells for them to open up, no one answers. Renjun kicks open the door.

It’s completely empty.

The house is stripped of almost everything, only the bare bones left behind. Someone had managed to completely pack up overnight. Renjun sends the officers off in pairs, checking every inch of the house for something—a potential lead, a scrap of evidence. He finds nothing. Every other pair he checks in with reports the same, and he’s about to call it quits before one of his officers yells for him, saying they’d found something in the dining room.

On a wooden table, bare of any decoration, sits a red baseball cap. Renjun pulls on gloves and picks it up—the _Lee’s Pizzeria_ logo stares back at him from the front, garishly bright in the dingy lighting seeping in through moth-eaten curtains. There’s a noticeable tear in the side. Renjun puts it in a plastic bag—the only evidence bag they manage to fill up in the entire investigation.

In the end, they close the case with the more-than-probable deaths of the girls in the car. The file gets lost somewhere in the evidence locker. Renjun tucks it in the back of his mind, choosing to focus his attention on getting to know the two boys that now refuse to leave him alone, taking up all of his free time, and that’s that.

_But the fun never stops, does it?_

Renjun’s exhausted. He can’t say he’s not happy to have this job—he loves it even more after finally returning to the city and getting promoted—but there’s something about having five missing person reports come in from a town out in the countryside that “are suspected to be linked somehow” and “you’ve seen something like this before, right?” that’s exhausting. Right now, Renjun couldn’t give a shit about the open cases sitting on his desk. When the subway finally spits him out a block from the apartment he shares with his boyfriends, he couldn’t be happier to see the ugly old brick facade of the buildings on the street he’s walked a thousand times to get home.

“I’m home,” he calls out when he lets himself in, toeing off his shoes and dutifully placing them on the rack by the two other pairs already sitting there.

There’s giggling coming from the kitchen. “Welcome home,” Jaemin says, breaking off to burst into high-pitched laughter. “We’re in the kitchen, come here.”

Renjun drops his briefcase on the couch, heading to the kitchen to investigate. Both Jaemin and Jeno have flour all over them, and Jaemin has smudges of red on his face. He’s licking sauce off of a spoon. Jeno’s doing a horrible job of tossing dough, and both of them are absolutely beside themselves at it.

“What are you two doing?” asks Renjun, unable to stop the smile breaking across his face.

“We were gonna surprise you with homemade pizza,” explains Jaemin, giggling, “but Jeno sucks at tossing dough.”

“Speak for yourself,” says Jeno, pouting. When Jaemin turns away to look at Renjun, Jeno smears more flour onto Jaemin’s cheeks, smiling in satisfaction when he yelps. “I’m not the one who ruined the entire first batch by dropping it on the floor.”

Renjun takes a seat at the island, watching the two of them squabble. “Am I gonna get to eat dinner tonight?” he teases.

“Most definitely,” says Jaemin, at the same time Jeno says, “We should probably order take out.”

A new round of bickering starts, but Renjun’s attention is drawn away by the phone vibrating in his pocket. It’s an unknown number. Renjun takes the call and puts it on speaker. “Hello?”

He flinches at the nasty screech of feedback that leaves the speakers, before the audio finally calms down into something intelligible. “Hi,” says a bright, feminine voice. “I’d like to order a pepperoni pizza. Please send your cutest delivery boy.”

Renjun furrows his eyebrows. “I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong number,” he says politely.

Instead of apologizing and ending the conversation there, the girl laughs. “No, I’m sure I don’t. Have a nice day, detective. We can’t wait to see you again.”

The call ends abruptly before he can memorize the number. When Renjun checks the call history, it doesn’t show up. _Huh._ He puts his phone back into his pocket. _That was weird._

He looks up expecting to see Jeno and Jaemin still going at it, but they’re both staring at him. He hadn’t noticed they’d stopped. “What?”

Both of their faces are paler than the flour that dusts their hands. “No fucking way,” breathes Jeno, looking more scared than Renjun’s ever seen him. He sets the dough on the counter, squeezing it so hard Renjun’s afraid he’s going to rip it apart.

“What? What’s wrong?”

Jaemin’s knuckles are white around the spoon. “Renjun, do you remember what happened three years ago? When we first met?”


End file.
